THE RECKONING--CHANCEY'S LARGE CAT--AND THE COACH.
The morning arrived, and at the appointed hour Sir Henry Ashwoode
dismounted in Whitefriar Street, and gave the bridle of his horse to
the groom who accompanied him.
"Well," thought he, as he entered the dingy, dilapidated square in
which Chancey's lodgings were situated, "this matter, at all events, is
arranged--I sha'n't hang, though I'm half inclined to allow I deserve
to do so for my infernal folly in trying the thing at all; but no
matter, it has given me a lesson I sha'n't soon forget. As to the rest,
what care I now? Let ruin pounce upon me in any shape but that--luckily
I have still enough to keep body and soul together left."
He paused to indulge in ruminations of no very pleasant kind, and then
half muttered,--
"I have been a fool--I have walked in a dream. Only to think of a man
like me, who has seen something of the world, allowing that d----d hag
to play him such a trick. Well, I believe it _is_ true, after all, that
we cannot have wisdom without paying for it. If my acquisitions bear
any proportion to my outlay, I ought to be a Solomon by this time."
The door was opened to his summons by Gordon Chancey himself. When
Ashwoode entered, Chancey carefully locked the door on the inside and
placed the key in his pocket.
"It's as well, Sir Henry, to be on the safe side," observed Chancey,
shuffling towards the table. "Dear me, dear me, there's no such thing
as being too careful--is there, Sir Henry?"
"Well, well, well, let's to business," said young Ashwoode, hurriedly,
seating himself at the end of a heavy deal table, at which was a chair,
and taking from his pocket a large leathern pocket-book. "You have
the--the security here?"
"Of course--oh, dear, of course," replied the barrister; "the bond and
warrant of attorney--that d----d forgery--it is in the next room, very
safe--oh, dear me, yes indeed."
It struck Ashwoode that there was something, he could not exactly say
what, unusual and sinister in the manner of Mr. Chancey, as well as in
his emphasis and language, and he fixed his eye upon him for a moment
with a searching glance. The barrister, however, busied himself with
tumbling over some papers in a drawer.
"Well, why don't you get it?" asked Ashwoode, impatiently.
"Never mind, never mind," replied Chancey; "do _you_ reckon your money
over, and be very sure the bond will come time enough. I don't wonder,
though, you're eager to have it fast in your own hands again--but it
will come--it will come."
Ashwoode proceeded to open the pocket-book and to turn over the notes.
"They're all right," said he, "they're all right. But, hush!" he added,
slightly changing colour--"I hear something stirring in the next room."
"Oh, dear, dear, it's nothing but the cat," rejoined Chancey, with an
ugly laugh.
"Your cat treads very heavily," said Ashwoode, suspiciously.
"So it does," rejoined Chancey, "it does tread heavy; it's a very large
cat, so it is; it has wonderful great claws; it can see in the dark;
it's a great cat; it never missed a rat yet; and I've seen it lure the
bird off a branch with the mere power of its eye; it's a great cat--but
reckon your money, and I'll go in for the bond."
This strange speech was uttered in a manner at least as strange, and
Chancey, without waiting for commentary or interruption, passed into
the next room. The step crossed the adjoining chamber, and Ashwoode
heard the rustling of papers; it then returned, the door opened, and
_not_ Gordon Chancey, but Nicholas Blarden entered the room and
confronted Sir Henry Ashwoode. Personal fear in bodily conflict was a
thing unknown to the young baronet, but now all courage, all strength
forsook him, and he stood gazing in vacant horror upon that, to him,
most tremendous apparition, with a face white as ashes, and covered
with the starting dews of terror.
With that hideous combination, a smile and a scowl, stamped upon his
coarse features, the wretch stood with folded arms, in an attitude of
indescribable exultation, gazing with savage, gloating eyes full upon
his appalled and terror-stricken victim. Fixed as statues they both
remained for several minutes.
"Ho, ho, ho! you look frightened, young man," exclaimed Blarden, with a
horse laugh; "you look as if you were going to be hanged--you look as
if the hemp were round your neck--you look as if the hangman had you by
the collar, you do--ho, ho, ho!"
Ashwoode's bloodless lips moved, but utterance was gone.
"It's hard to get the words out," continued Blarden, with ferocious
glee. "I never knew the man yet could do a last dying speech smooth--a
sort of choking comes on, eh?--the sight of the minister and the
hangman makes a man feel so quare, eh?--and the coffin looks so ugly,
and all the crowd; it's confusing somehow, and puts a man out, eh?--ho,
ho, ho!"
Ashwoode laid his hand upon his forehead, and gazed on in blank horror.
"Why, you're not such a great man, by half, as you were in the
play-house the other evening," continued Blarden; "you don't look so
grand, by any manner of means. Some way or other, you look a little
sickish or so. I'm afraid you don't like my company--ho, ho, ho!"
Still Sir Henry remained locked in the same stupefied silence.
"Ho, ho! you seem to think your hemp is twisted, and your boards
sawed," resumed Blarden; "you seem to think you're in a fix at
last--and so do I, by ----!" he thundered, "for _I_ have the rope
fairly round your weasand, and, by ---- I'll make you dance upon
nothing, at Gallows Hill, before you're a month older. Do you hear
_that_--do you--you swindler? Eh--you gaol-bird, you common forger, you
robber, you crows' meat--who holds the winning cards now?"
"Where--where's the bond?" said Ashwoode, scarce audibly.
"Where's your precious bond, you forger, you gibbet-carrion?" shouted
Blarden, exultingly. "Where's your forged bond--the bond that will
crack your neck for you--where is it, eh? Why, here--here in my
breeches pocket--_that's_ where it is. I hope you think it safe
enough--eh, you gallows-tassle?"
Yielding to some confused instinctive prompting to recover the fatal
instrument, Ashwoode drew his sword, and would have rushed upon his
brutal and triumphant persecutor; but Blarden was not unprepared even
for this. With the quickness of light, he snatched a pistol from his
coat pocket, recoiling, as he did so, a hurried pace or two, and while
he turned, coward as he was, pale and livid as death, he levelled it at
the young man's breast, and both stood for an instant motionless, in
the attitudes of deadly antagonism.
"Put up your sword; I have you there, as well as everywhere
else--regularly checkmated, by ----!" shouted Blarden, with the
ferocity of half-desperate cowardice. "Put up your sword, I say, and
don't be a bloody idiot, along with everything else. Don't you see
you're done for?--there's not a chance left you. You're in the cage,
and there's no need to knock yourself to pieces against the
bars--you're done for, I tell you."
With a mute but expressive gesture of despair, Ashwoode grasped his
sword by the slender, glittering blade, and broke it across. The
fragments dropped from his hands, and he sunk almost lifeless into a
chair--a spectacle so ghastly, that Blarden for a moment thought that
death was about to rescue his victim.
"Chancey, come out here," exclaimed Blarden; "the fellow has taken the
staggers--come out, will you?"
"Oh! dear me, dear me," said Chancey, in his own quiet way, "but he
looks very bad."
"Go over and shake him," said Blarden, still holding the pistol in his
hand. "What are you afraid of? He can't hurt you--he has broken his
bilbo across--the symbol of gentility. By ----! he's a good deal down
in the mouth."
While they thus debated, Ashwoode rose up, looking more like a corpse
endowed with motion than a living man.
"Take me away at once," said he, with a sullen wildness--"take me away
to gaol, or where you will--anywhere were better than this place. Take
me away; I am ruined--blasted. Make the most of it--your infernal
scheme has succeeded--take me to prison."
"Oh, murder! he wants to go to gaol--do you hear him, Chancey?" cried
Blarden--"such an elegant, fine gentleman to think of such a thing:
only to think of a baronet in gaol--and for forgery, too--and the
condemned cell such an ungentlemanly sort of a hole. Why, you'd have to
use perfumes to no end, to make the place fit for the reception of your
aristocratic visitors--my Lord this, and my Lady that--for, of course,
you'll keep none but the best of company--ho, ho, ho! Perhaps the judge
that's to try you may turn out to be an old acquaintance, for your luck
is surprising--isn't it, Chancey?--and he'll pay you a fine compliment,
and express his regret when he's going to pass sentence, eh?--ho, ho,
ho! But, after all, I'd advise you, if the condescension is not too
much to expect from such a very fine gentleman as you, to consort as
much as possible with the turnkey--he's the most useful friend you can
make, under your peculiarly delicate circumstances--ho, ho!--eh? It's
just possible he mayn't like to associate with you, for some of them
fellows are rather stiff, d'ye see, and won't keep company with certain
classes of the coves in quod, such as forgers or pickpockets; but if
he'll allow it, you'd better get intimate with him--ho, ho, ho!--eh?"
"Take me to the prison, sir," said Ashwoode, sternly--"I suppose you
mean to do so. Let your officers remove me at once--you have, no doubt,
men for the purpose in the next room. Let them call a coach, and I will
go with them--but let it be at once."
"Well, you're not far out there, by ----!" replied Blarden. "I _have_ a
broad-shouldered acquaintance or two, and a little bit of a
warrant--you understand?--in the next apartment. Grimes, Grimes, come
in here--you're wanted."
A huge, ill-looking fellow, with his coat buttoned up to his chin, and
a short pipe protruding from the corner of his mouth, swaggered into
the chamber, with that peculiar gait which seems as if contracted by
habitually shouldering and jostling through mobs and all manner of
riotous assemblies.
"_That's_ the bird?" said the fellow, interrogatively, and pointing
with his pipe carelessly at Ashwoode. "You're my prisoner," he added,
gruffly addressing the unfortunate young man, and at the same time
planting his ponderous hand heavily upon his shoulder, he in the other
exhibited a crumpled warrant.
"Grimes, go call a coach," said Blarden, "and don't be a brace of
shakes about it, do you mind."
Grimes departed, and Blarden, after a long pause, suddenly addressing
himself to Ashwoode, resumed, in a somewhat altered tone, but with
intenser sternness still,--
"Now, I tell you what it is, my young cove, I have a sort of half a
notion not to send you to gaol at all, do you hear?"
"Pshaw, pshaw!" said Ashwoode, turning bitterly away.
"I tell you I'm speaking what I mean," rejoined Blarden; "I'll not send
you there _now_ at any rate. I want to have a bit of chat with you this
evening, and it shall rest with you whether you go there at all or not;
I'll give you the choice fairly. We'll meet, then, at Morley Court this
evening, at eight o'clock; and for fear of accidents in the meantime,
you'll have no objection to our mutual friend, Mr. Chancey, and our
common acquaintance, Mr. Grimes, accompanying you home in the coach,
and just keeping an eye on you till I come, for fear you might be out
walking when I call--you understand me? But here's Grimes. Mr. Grimes,
my particular friend Sir Henry Ashwoode has taken an extraordinary
remarkable fancy to you, and wishes to know whether you'll do him the
favour to take a jaunt with him in a carriage to see his house at
Morley Court, and to spend the day with him and Mr. Chancey, for he
finds that his health requires him to keep at home, and he has a
particular objection to be left alone, even for a minute. Sir Henry,
the coach is at the door. You'd better bundle up your bank-notes, they
may be useful to you. Chancey, tell Sir Henry's groom, as you pass,
that he'll not want his horse any more to-day."
The party went out; Sir Henry, pale as death, and scarcely able to
support himself on his limbs, walking between Chancey and the herculean
constable. Blarden saw them safely shut up in the vehicle, and giving
the coachman his orders, gazed after them as they drove away in the
direction of Morley Court, with a flushed face and a bounding heart.